And what type of locomotive is it?
Any takers?
Oh, and check out the coupler…and you thought knuckle couplers were a pain!
You might have seen a couple of these guys, around 6 or so, under big blue tarps with
NREC on the tarp…
Judging by the name on the locomotive, could it be going to Africa? the Middle East? Australia? Those are the first 3 that popped into my mind…
That coupler design just looks dangerous… I don’t think I would want to be working with that…
Based on the colors in the photo containing the coupler, and the hunched over look, I’d guess New Zealand.
The coupler looks like an old HO coupler used by John Allen and a few others. They probably couple on contact.
My guess is Kenya.
As for locomotive type, how about U26C?
Tough crowd…
Kenya, South Africa…its a G12, (EMD) with a modified body.
ERC calls it a E3000…
http://www.magadisoda.co.ke/index.htm
Look at the coupler again, you snug it up with a hand screw, almost like what is on a bench vise.
Not so sure I would put my hands near the thing.
Now I see what you mean about the coupler. At least you wouldn’t be putting your hands between the face plates. You might have to stand between the cars.
…Ed…Will the supporting flat car be shipped onto the ship along with the engine…? Or will special cribbing be “built” for it to be loaded aboard…?
Those are really wierd looking coupliers…It appears they would be time consuming if that screw must be adjusted each time it’s coupled.
The flat cars stay here.
They will pick up the entire locomotive, along with the trucks, which right now, are chained tight to the frame.
Yup, they have a few ships with rails in the ships hold, but most of the time, they sit it down on blocks, flat on the deck, just like it is on the flat car, and chain it in place.
When we shipped the old BN B30-7As to Brazil, along with a bunch of C30-7s, they set them down on scrap rail welded to the floor of the hold, then laid plate steel on a boxed frame around and above those, and began to stack them on top of each other.
They crammed 15 locomotives into one ship at Texas Terminal that way…startled me, I didn’t expect them to stack them up like that, and I didn’t realize the ships could carry that much weight…till I figured out it was probably lighter than a small tanker full of crude oil.
I will see if I can find a photo I have of them un loading them, taken from the ship bridge, it is looking down into the hold, and you see a bunch of locomotives, only inches apart from each other, lining the ships bottom hold/deck.
Regarding the coupler:
Is that the type of coupler known as a “meatchopper”?
I dont have a clue…which is why I posted it here, hoping someone would know the name of it.
I have found very little information regarding the meatchopper, and no definitive pictures. I did find one picture of a coupler that was very similar (slightly different shape to the “hook”) - the name on the picture was “chopper coupler”.
From Wikipedia:
Meatchopper (also known as Norwegian) couplings consist of a central buffer with a mechanical hook that drops into a slot in the central buffer. The hook resembles a meat chopper, hence the name. The meatchopper is found only on narrow-gauge railways, where low speeds and reduced train loads allow a simpler system.
I have also learned that there was (is?) a Jones coupler that is a modification of the Norwegian coupler, but alas, I have turned up no information or pictures on that either.
Maybe some of the “overseas” members can set us straight on Ed’s strange engine with the ‘NMRA- looking’ couplers![banghead]
I can tell you the “hook” part flips straight up, almost 90 degrees, or at a right angle to the position it is in now…so it pivots down…from looking a little closer, it seem the two hooks, the one here and the one on the car, have the same shape, and one rides over the other…the one lowest will drop into the slot in the plate, the upper one will lock on the back of the other hook.
You use the screws to snug it all up
Kenya should be correct. Magadi Soda is a subsidiary of Brunner Mond, until december 2005 a part of the British company ICI. Location is the Great Rift valley.
http://www.magadisoda.co.ke/Gallery.htm
I do know that East African railways were heavily influenced by the railways of India, especially technically (track gauge etc.).
This link has a map with Magadi just southwest of Nairobi and a picture of a steamer with the same couplers.
http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail/Kenya/nrm.html
greetings,
Marc Immeker
The similarities between East African and Indian railroading are hardly surprising, considering that they have a common past as British possessions and their railroads were probably built by British engineers.
Magadi Soda (http://www.magadisoda.co.ke/more.htm) collects trona from Lake Magadi and processes it into soda ash. It is mainly used throughout the world to make glass. There are a few pictures of their railroad equipment on their website.